


Lavender

by hexlibris



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Leaving Home, M/M, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Second Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-23 02:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17071562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexlibris/pseuds/hexlibris
Summary: Distantly, as though he’s talking to Billy from another room, Steve says, “Are you crying?”“Fuck off,” he says pathetically. “It’s my—it’s my—I get fucking allergies.”He scrubs his fists over his eyes; he can’t look Steve in the face,he can’t cry.“It’s okay to cry,” Steve says; Billy can hear him take a step closer. Can hear him breathing, wet, ragged breaths that are just audible over the whine of cicadas in the trees. “I cry all the time.”Billy makes a disparaging noise. Sinking to his knees, curling his spine into the shape of a clenched fist; seeking the shade of the cars, retreating in fear of the light, the sound. He doesn’t want to hurt Steve, but he will if Steve forces him to. He’ll have to. It’s the only way he can get through this.“No, really,” Steve’s voice says. “It’s okay, Billy.”It’s not, Billy thinks, eyes still closed.It won’t ever be okay. It’s wrong. I’m wrong.





	Lavender

**Author's Note:**

> asbjsknslks this is the third time I've tried to upload this story -- my sincerest apologies to those of you who received a notification email for a fic that actually doesn't exist!!! I had to delete the other version because AO3 posted it on the wrong date and then deleted all my formatting when I tried to re-upload D:

On the first day of spring, 1985, Billy Hargrove leaves home for good.

When he does, it’s without any warning. He doesn’t tell any adults. Doesn’t even leave a note for Susan. The last time he told them he was leaving—which has been, so far, every year since the age of fourteen—Neil would break things. Take all his clothes from his closet and dump them on the street. Scream obscenities until Billy had no choice but to submit, all rebellious desire ground to dust by his father’s sheer force of presence, the inescapable shadow he cast over his bedroom doorway. Neighbors would call the cops. When Billy showed the female officer the boot-shaped bruises on his rib cage and lower back, her eyes had flicked from his long hair to his earring and back again before she asked him what he’d done to make his father so mad.

Billy’s eighteen now, and this time, he’s learned his lesson.

On the first day of spring, Neil is at his new job, working over-time at a factory that produces weaponry parts commissioned by the United States Army. Susan—a self-described introvert and homebody—has finally seen fit to leave the protective cocoon of her bedroom; she’s out getting her nails done. It had been Billy’s idea, although he had to work hard to make her believe it was really her idea: telling her, _you need a break, Suze, raising two kids can’t be easy._

With these safeguards in place, Billy is able to vanish from his father’s doorstep, and the only person to see him go is his step-sister, Max.

Max, rolling into his room on the skateboard she had to bind back together with duct tape, after Billy broke it almost in two. Placed it under the back wheel of the Camaro and reversed until he heard wood splinter and Max’s scream, an outpouring of grief and rage that seemed to ring in his ears long after she slammed the front door in his face.

“Aren’t you going to tell me off?” she asks.

“Move,” Billy says.

He hefts his gym bag over his shoulder and pushes past her, stepping out into the hall. The board rumbles over Susan’s meticulously mopped floors as Max maneuvers it around, propelling herself forwards by way of the wall.

“But I’m breaking the _rules_ ,” she calls after him.

“Not my problem,” Billy mutters under his breath.

It’s true. None of them—Max, Susan, his father—are his problem anymore. He’s free, like that Lynyrd Skynyrd song: _free as a bird, and this bird you cannot change._

Gym bag hanging from his shoulder, Billy walks down the hall and opens the front door. He’s greeted by the sight of Susan’s wilted rose bushes, dying a slow death under a burning blue sky—but no maroon BMW. No Steve.

His watch tells him that it’s eleven o’clock in the morning, which means that Steve’s late.

“Billy,” Max says.

Billy’s hand grows sweaty around the doorknob as he stares at the empty driveway: Steve’s late. His mind picks feverishly at the fact like a splinter lodged under his thumbnail: Steve’s late, Steve’s late, late for a very important date! Billy tries to breathe, to calm himself and think rationally, but the superstitious dread still manages to seep through, darkening the corners of his vision: Steve’s late. Something’s gone wrong. Neil—

“ _Billy._ ”

He slams the door shut so forcefully the panes of glass at the top rattle in their frames. “For fuck’s sake, _what_?”

Max takes a hasty step back, her hands flying upwards to protect her face. When she realizes that Billy’s not going to hit her, she lowers them. Her palms are up, open in a gesture of surrender; a white flag.

“Do you want it?” she says.

Instead of hitting her, Billy simply chews on his lip. He tries not to think about the empty driveway behind him, telling himself that anything could have happened to make Steve late, and not all of it bad: traffic, car issues, hell, the lazy fucker probably just slept through his alarm. Then he blanches, realizing that he’s been asked a question. “Want what?”

She hops off the board, nudging it with her foot. It rolls smoothly in his direction, coming to a gentle stop when it knocks against the heel of his sneaker.

Billy can’t do anything but stare at her. If it’s a joke, or her idea of revenge, he probably deserves it. But if it isn’t … he hasn’t skated since California. Since long before Neil remarried. Neil, bless him, had broken the last board he’d ever owned. Run right over it with the wheels of his work truck. “I don’t—”

“Take it,” Max says. “Seriously. I don’t want it. I’m saving for a new one.”

( _what is it what’s different about her_ )

Billy still doesn’t know what to say, so he laughs. He tries to make it sound mean, like he doesn’t really give a shit, like he’s about to shove her so that she’s falling backwards onto her skinny ass and she’s sobbing, hair sticking to her face and she’s asking him _what did you do that for_ and Billy never quite has an answer for her, aside from _because I can and I did and I’ll do it again_ —but then the laughter catches in his throat, unwinding like a length of thread caught on a nail.

She’s grown taller, he thinks suddenly. Not by much; just enough to be significant. A year ago, Maxine would have to look up at him, or else he’d grip her by the chin and force her. Now they’re almost at eye-level. Christ, how come he’s never noticed that before?

“I don’t want your charity,” he says. “I don’t need it.”

“It’s not charity. It’s—” She hugs herself with her arms, gives a little shrug of her shoulders. “You’re not going to be home for dinner tonight, are you?”

Billy curls his lip. “No, Maxine. I’m not.”

“Then you should take it,” she urges. “So you can miss me.”

Billy wonders what else he’s never noticed about her. The way she’s standing up straight, instead of with a slight hunch to her shoulders; the flare of glittery blue eyeliner at the corners of her eyes. The faintly chemical trace of dollar-store perfume, pretty and flowery and _not her._

It was simpler when she was younger, Billy thinks. All it would take was a look, and Maxine would recoil like a traumatized animal in a Skinner box, trembling in anticipation of an electric shock. It used to make Billy laugh, the idea that she might be terrified of him. Dumb fucking kids. It used to make him feel powerful.

His foot rests on the edge of the skateboard and presses down, lifting it up at an angle. As he does Billy remembers another dumb fucking kid he used to know, a kid not much older than Max is now. This kid dressed in clothes his father didn’t wear anymore, loose, featureless clothes to hide the paunch he carried around his belly like a spare tire. The kid wasn’t angry then, not yet. The anger came later, when he started to understand what Neil had done to him, what he might have done to his mother to make her leave the way she did. No, at that age, all Billy the kid felt was a bone-deep numbness. He’d go to the skatepark every night and practice flaying the skin off his knees and palms and elbows by falling off his board, splitting his head open on the hard concrete. At least it made him feel like he was moving, instead of sitting still, rotting in his too-big clothes. At least it made some feeling return to his arms and legs; a reminder that he wasn’t made of white noise but blood, pumping hot and red over his fingers.

Billy tilts the board up higher, then lets it thump back down. “I’m not coming back,” he says. Just so she understands.

“I know. You don’t have to. But—”

Through his step-mom’s curtains, Billy catches new movement: Steve pausing at his mailbox, as if to check the number against the address Billy’s given him. The sudden relief he feels is dizzying, overwhelming, a breathless soaring in his stomach that almost gives way to hot, fuming nausea; he watches, rapt, as Steve looks up and smiles brightly at him. Billy doesn’t return the smile, although he wants to. Steve has that effect on him sometimes, makes him want things he’d never normally dream of wanting.

Looking back at her, he asks, “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure,” Max says firmly. She gives him two quick punches on his shoulder; it’s the closest they’ll ever get to a hug. “Have a nice life, shitbird.”

*

It never ceases to amaze Billy, how little he has.

His beloved leather and jean jackets. Several choice shirts, folded up and placed inside a cardboard box along with his toothbrush, cologne, and hair products. His basketball and gym bag, weighed down by his text books—all second-hand or stolen, binders unraveling, coffee stains browning the pages. Another cardboard box for his cassette tapes and video games. His boots, pillow, and bedding.

It should make him angry, that the sum total of all the individual parts to his life amount to nothing more than a shopping cart Steve ‘borrowed’ from the lot behind Malvald’s, and the clothes on his back: a sleeveless T-shirt, frayed shorts, and Converse sneakers with their laces neatly tucked in. It should make him sad.

“Yeah, sorry. Dad wouldn’t let me have the car,” Steve says.

“It’s fine,” Billy says. “It’ll do.”

For the longest time, anger was all he had.

Anger to brush his teeth, butter his toast, and hold his hand as he crossed the road, following the flashing green ‘WALK’ signal. Anger to sit with him as he tried not to cry, knowing that the walls were thin enough for Neil to hear him. Anger to keep him awake when his mom couldn’t come to soothe away the night terrors, when Billy had to listen to her cry instead through the paper-thin walls. Slap-slap-cry, went the script then. His father’s short, curt dismissive: _for God’s sake, stop whining, woman. I barely touched you._

Anger to give him a reason to get up in the morning, when she was gone. It was easier, when his anger had a face, a focal point to latch onto. Easier to fight back whenever Neil rubbed his nose in it, how unloved he was, how his mom never gave a fuck about him, and even if she did, you think that thankless whore would’ve left you behind if she wanted you, Billy-boy?

Billy thought he’d be angry, looking at his meager belongings as they are now. Thinking about how it had come to this; how Neil was too stingy to buy him proper clothes, proper _books_ , not just the bare necessities for school but books he would’ve loved, would’ve read from cover to cover if he’d been allowed to; how if he’d been born anyone else, he’d have more to show for. More than a fucking shopping cart, at least.

Instead of anger, Billy just experiences that same internal tilting motion he’d felt when he realized that if Maxine is old enough to wear makeup, then she’s old enough to see right through him: like a boat without a rudder, set adrift on an aimless sea. He glances over his shoulder at his dad’s house and understands, with profoundness and power, that it’s the last time. He’s free; loose, disconnected from all that he was. There’s another word for that, a word that doesn’t occur to him until he looks back at the cart, at Steve pushing it: _homeless._

“If you say so.” Steve steps off the drive, steering the cart onto the road. They don’t have sidewalks in Hawkins; just wide, sweeping country roads with no speed limit. “You’ll still be able to see her, you know.”

“Yeah,” Billy says.

“She’s a tough kid. She’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah.”

“You had to do it for yourself,” Steve says. His voice is quiet, like he knows exactly what’s running through the dark waterways of Billy’s head: Max, alone with his dad. Susan a silent, unobtrusive shadow in the other room.

Maybe Steve knows more than Billy’s willing to admit. It wouldn’t be the first time Steve’s surprised him; when Billy first came to Hawkins, he thought he had the guy pegged: rich, spoiled, probably never had to struggle a day in his life. Parents perpetually absent, neglectful of their only son in the sense that expensive cars and nice clothes are a substitute for love and familial warmth. Billy’s from L.A; he knows the type. Back then, there was nothing he wouldn’t have given to have what he thought Steve had.

But then Steve had surprised him.

_Look man, everyone’s talking about it, so I just wanted to clear the air a little. Those bruises on your legs._

To this day, Billy still doesn’t know what had made him tell.

They’d been dawdling at the far end of the track oval, where the grass starts to grow wild and scratches at your knees with long scraggly claws, where you can sometimes find used condoms and discarded syringes in amongst the tree roots. Not quite friends but definitely not enemies, either. A tentative in-between. The far end of the track oval was neutral ground, a place where Billy could bum a smoke and shoot the shit without any questions asked. It was uncomplicated, a reprieve from everything else happening in their lives; uncomplicated, they told themselves and each other.

(Only each interaction with Steve had been burned on the back of Billy’s eyelids, and when he lay in bed at night he would play these interactions over and over behind his eyes, reliving every moment Steve made him laugh, every moment he made _Steve_ laugh; the way Steve’s eyes went wide and round whenever he was excited and couldn’t stop to take a breath while telling Billy a story. Small, insignificant moments that Billy might’ve thought nothing of, if Steve were anyone else; but Steve’s not anyone else, and so Billy would catch himself examining these moments obsessively, running his hand over their texture, assigning meaning to the smallest intricacies. He would wonder if Steve was doing the same thing, lying awake in bed and asking himself if that jolt of electricity he’d felt as he handed Billy a cigarette had been real, or imagined.)

Steve had been the one to offer him the carton of Marlboro Reds that time, Billy remembers. His hand had barely pressed the filter to his lips before Steve cut right to the chase: _those bruises on your legs._

Billy’s hand had faltered in mid-air. “I fell,” he said, with learned casualness. “On the back patio. Head was in the clouds, you know what I’m saying?”

“No. I don’t know what you’re saying,” Steve had said. “You don’t strike me as the head in the clouds type, Hargrove.”

Behind closed doors, that’s his father’s motto. Neil had been livid when the neighbors called the cops back in Cali; pacing their tiny kitchen like a caged panther, raging to Susan that _it’s none of their fucking business how I discipline my children_. You’re supposed to keep the violence contained behind closed doors and drawn curtains where no one can see the bruises it leaves behind like craters; and at night when you can’t sleep because you’re so fucking scared that he’s going to come back, and you can’t stop crying even though you know it’s bad, you know he might hear you and come anyway—that’s when you clamp down on the pain, scrunch it into a tight ball, and let it drop between the sewer grate of the subconscious, down where all the other shit and bad memories float like drowned bodies, because he’s not a kid anymore, he’s a man—and not just any man, but a Man of the House. That’s how his dad made the title sound, like something important, special: _you’re a man of the house, now, and you need to be strong_ —but when Steve confronted Billy that day at the far end of the track oval, he wondered if he really had it in him to be strong. If all he’d been waiting for was the right person—a friend, maybe—to come along and ask the question so Billy could spill his guts instead of clamping down.

“You deserve better than that, Billy,” Steve reminds him again.

Billy listens to the squeak-squeak-squeak of the cart’s broken front wheel, his neck glazing over with sweat. It doesn’t sound right, what Steve’s telling him; no matter how many times Steve repeats the words, they’ll still sort of sound like nonsense words to Billy, gibberish. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Steve squares his shoulders, like this is a pep talk they’re having before a big game. “Okay, okay. We’re okay. It’s gonna be okay. You’re outta there. That’s all that matters.”

They continue on down the street, heading in the direction of the railroad. The houses are getting smaller and smaller, more run-down, their unkempt flowerbeds creeping onto the road in a hazy rainbow tide. Through a thicket of wild lavender, Billy can hear Mrs. Carlisle yelling at her sons to turn that wretched TV off and get out into the sunshine, you lazy lumps. The smell of lavender crawls up his airways like a physical thing. It was rampant out west, Billy remembers, out by the ocean; it made his chest itch and his ears swell like overfilled balloons, but he let Maxine weave it in his hair anyway. Until Neil saw them, and made Billy cut it out.

He jumps when he feels something swat at his arm: Steve’s fist, taking him off guard. Billy rounds on him furiously, rubbing his sore bicep: “What was that for?”

“I dunno,” Steve says, shrugging. “You’re too quiet. Makes me feel like somethin’s gonna happen.”

Billy has the insane urge to tell him about the panic, the fear that came with thinking that Steve wasn’t going to come. That he’d forgotten, or that something terrible had happened to him on the way. That feeling still hasn’t left him; it’s still hovering behind his lips like a pent-up scream. _Kill the kid_ , he thinks, biting his tongue.

“Um,” Steve says; when Billy looks up, he sees that the cart’s stopped in the middle of the road, listing to the left in the breeze. Steve’s staring at the skateboard tucked under his arm, mouth half-open, and Billy knows he wants to ask. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Billy thinks of the skatepark, that concrete oasis he always went to when he wanted to pretend he wasn’t ever going back to his dad’s house. Of smashing himself to bits on handrails and half-pipes and funboxes. Of the boys, some young, like him. Some older, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, either, that he wore his father’s clothes second-hand, or that he was chubby and clumsy and awkward, because he still had a nice face. _A nice face with a nicer mouth_ , one boy told him, laughing. Funny, Billy’s never been able to remember any of _their_ faces. Only the sting of his scalp as their fingers found his hair and shoved him down.

“No,” he says.

Kill the kid, don’t let him speak. Keep it behind closed doors.

“Okay,” Steve says. Billy waits for the broken wheel to start squeaking again, but Steve stays in the middle of the road. His eyes are scrunched at the corners as he looks at Billy carefully, as if sizing him up. “Do you want to talk at all?”

Billy shifts the skateboard uncomfortably from one armpit to the other. “Just tell me what’s going to happen when we get to Mrs. Henderson’s.”

“Oh. Well,” Steve says, and he kicks the cart back into motion with his foot, leaning on the handlebars as it skates over the asphalt. “She’s got the spare room set up for you, you can leave your stuff there. I gotta call the station, let Flo know you still need to get your car. She’ll probably send Hop over—I know you don’t like cops, Billy, but he’s one of the good ones, you know, he’s—”

“I know. Do what you have to do.”

Steve grins at him, pulling his shirt out of his belt and for an alarming moment Billy thinks he’s going to take it off—then he realizes that Steve’s just using the material to soak up the sweat collecting on his temples. His eyes are immediately drawn to the thatch of dark hair that leads past the button of Steve’s jeans, contrasting nicely with the pale purple of his polo. _Kill the kid._ He doesn’t want to look away, but it’s not like he has a say in that. _Kill that fat little queer dead._

They’ve kissed before.

On New Year’s Eve, back when Steve was just Harrington and Billy was the town asshole who hit him so hard it left him with a jagged split in his front tooth, Billy had found himself splayed on Heather Maye’s sweaty living room sofa, mouth tacky from the liquid Nyquil Tommy had slipped into his pocket between first and second period. Through the crowd, he’d glimpsed Harrington dancing with Robin. Heather’s fairy lights had circled Steve’s hair like a jeweled halo, daubing the skin of his neck and cheeks in soft, angelic pastels; the longer Billy watched, the heavier his body felt, as if his pockets were filling with wet sand. The music had slowed, melted to the buzzing of flies, just as Harrington looked up and locked eyes with him from across the room. The flies had buzzed and crawled over Billy’s face in a restless prickly carpet; they could smell the rot, the parts of him that had shriveled up and gone to seed like old potatoes left in a dry cellar.

Harrington had spun Robin around once, twice, and Billy’s eyes followed them … watching their shadows chasing each other across the ceiling, and then Billy must have lost track of time, or the Nyquil was working a lot better than he thought it would … because then he was watching Harrington sidle between his legs. Harrington, hair beautifully mussed, eyes dark and sleepy, hauling himself onto Billy’s lap like he belonged there. Music buzzing, fairy lights blinking crystallized from the walls. They looked like they were breathing, those lights.

 _You’re too quiet_ , Harrington had murmured in his ear. _Let me wake you up._

His lips had fallen upon Billy like two burning leaves.

Pushing a pill into his mouth, lighting him up from the inside. _What is this_ , Billy had asked, _what are you doing to me?_ and Steve had answered by pushing his tongue further into his mouth, kissing him until the pill dissolved and Billy was forced to slip his hand down the back of Steve’s jeans and squeeze his ass with dazed sleepwalker uncertainty, unsure if it was real, unsure how far he’d be able to go before the dream vanished and he woke sweating and gasping in his sheets with his hand already around his cock— _it’s a magic bean, Jack_ , Harrington whispered, rocking his hips, _it’ll make you grow and grow and grow—_

“And grow,” Billy says.

“What?”

Steve’s still leaning on the handlebars of the cart, cheeks flushed an attractive rosy pink, shirt in disarray. “What?” Billy says.

“I’m asking you, man,” Steve says, his grin fading. “Seriously, I know this is hard for you, but you haven’t said a single goddamn word about the shirt I’m wearing today. I wore it just for you!”

“I don’t have a problem with the shirt.”

“But, see, that’s the problem,” insists Steve. “Usually, you can’t stop talking shit about what I wear! And like, this—” he plucks at his shirt and Billy’s mind jostles loudly with competing urges to touch, lick, taste, “—I wore this fucking monstrosity for _you_ , because it’s purple with pink stripes, it’s like, my _entire_ personality in a shirt—”

“You—you look nice,” Billy says. “You always look nice.”

The rosy flush in Steve’s cheeks has spread to his neck; either he’s sunburned or he’s blushing, but Billy’s not stupid enough to hope for the latter.

“Well.” Steve presses his tongue to the crack in his front tooth; Billy can hear the air whistling through it as he sucks in a breath. “Well. Hey, so do you.”

“I’m a fucking mess.”

“Don’t say that,” Steve chides gently. “You made it this far. One more step gets you closer to where you wanna go.”

He doesn’t smile. “Did you make that up?”

“Yeah. It’s good, isn’t it?” Steve’s grinning again; he reaches out and gives Billy’s shoulder a cheerful squeeze. Instinctively, Billy’s teeth clench shut over his tongue; he bites until he tastes blood. “Sometime today, Hargrove.”

Susan used to tell him that thoughts can become people. Watch out, honey, otherwise the wind will change and you’ll be stuck with that scowl on your face forever. Billy’s thoughts now are nasty and sharp and twisting as a maze; thoughts such as: _fuck you, fuck you, fuck you_ and _why are you being so nice to me? Fuck you_ and _take me back he’s going to kill me O JESUS DAD’S GOING TO FUCKING KILL ME WE NEED TO GO BACK RIGHT NOW_ ; he thinks about calling Steve ‘ _Harrington_ ’ as he punches him in the face and laughs, of making Steve pick up every one of his teeth piece by pretty piece. He wants to be angry. He wants to go back and tell his daddy that he’s sorry and that he’ll fix dinner right away sir yes sir, because sometimes if he buttered Neil up, sweet-talked him and didn’t run his mouth, Neil would get him a beer instead of using his fists. God help him, he can’t be angry at Steve. He told Billy that he deserves better. No one’s ever told Billy what he deserves.

The board falls from his armpit with a clattering of wheels. Billy moves without thinking, planting his foot on the back end of it, testing his weight on the wood. He looks at the blank stretch of road in front of him, measuring the distance to the railroad tracks: about eight or so houses away. Eyes on the fucking prize, Billy-boy: all he has to do is make it to Mrs. Henderson’s without losing his shit, and then he’s free.

“I didn’t know you skate,” Steve says, and all at once, that fucking cloying lavender smell grows stronger, causing Billy’s attention to slip and his knees to buckle.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he says; he knows without turning around that Steve’s close, too close. Pushing forward on the board, he lifts his other foot to put some distance between them. It comes easy to him, even after four years: his leg rises and falls mechanically, its timing perfect, not missing a beat; the hot wind whips at his hair and Billy feels, for the briefest moment, like he might have grown wings.

“Yeah.” Steve’s shadow ripples across the road; he’s puttering the cart along with kicks of his sneakers, keeping up with Billy’s pace easily. “I wish you’d tell me, though.”

The skateboard screeches to a halt and Steve curses as he almost bumps into the back of Billy’s legs, sending the cart veering off-course. “We don’t have that kind of relationship,” Billy tells him. His voice is too harsh. Steve looks like he’s been slapped.

“Don’t we? Here I was thinkin’ that most relationships are a two-way street.”

Billy bares his teeth in a vicious grin. Deep in the maw of his throat, he can still taste blood. “I don’t _do_ most relationships.”

“Yeah, but—”

“What more do you want to know, Steve?” The skateboard rolls away as Billy steps forward, crowding Steve against the boiling metal of a parked car; he doesn’t look back to see where it went. Steve’s chest is pressed against his; like Max, he doesn’t shy away from Billy breathing down his neck, just stares back blankly as Billy yanks his collar hard enough to rip the stitching. “Isn’t it enough for you, that my dad fucking hit his own kid? That he hit my mom? You want my horoscope, Harrington? You want to know what it feels like, to realize that half your life has been lost to a fucking abyss of bullshit and misery because you thought all of that was _normal_?”

“You liked it,” Steve says lowly. Billy can smell him; lavender and laundry and something he can’t place, something clean and fresh and sunny. His fingers tighten around Steve’s collar, willing him to flinch—daring him, just so Billy has a fucking excuse. “Not feeling so alone all the time.”

He peels himself off the surface of the car and leans forward; without knowing why, Billy pitches back, hands loosening their brittle hold on Steve’s collar. Is it blood he still tastes in the back of his throat, or is it a needle-pricking of fear? What will happen if he tells Steve the truth? _I don’t know what I’m feeling. How I’m supposed to feel. I don’t even know if this is real. Do you know what that’s like, Steve? To feel like you’re not livin’ in the right body?_

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going to happen once we get to Mrs. Henderson’s, huh?” Steve says, still in that low, heated voice. “You gonna shut me out? You’re too cool to be seen with me, is that it?”

“I’m alone,” Billy says. Voice brutally flat, eyes focused somewhere over Steve’s head.

Bizarrely, Steve laughs. “Lucky you,” he says, and then he’s stepping past him, walking back to the other side of the road to fetch Max’s skateboard from where it’s slid into the gap between two parked cars.

Billy doesn’t take the board from him. He keeps his arms locked at his sides, stiff and unyielding. “What do you _want_ , Harrington?”

Steve laughs again. “Fuck me, dude. You ever had friends?”

( _fucked all my friends oh yes I did and I let them fuck me too ‘cause I had a nice face and a nicer mouth and is that what you really want Steve isn’t that what friends are for_ )

“I—” For some reason, Billy looks up at the sky. It could almost be the sky back in California, on a warm day like this: blue and big and cloudless and the heat was a dry heat, like forest fire heat, it wasn’t wet like Indiana heat, like a moist towel wrapped around your neck … but it won’t ever be the same. It won’t ever be California. And then he realizes that he’s looking up at the sky not because he’s praying for the courage to tell Steve to go fuck himself to fall out of it, but because he’s trying not to cry. He’s not going to cry, goddammit; Neil will hear him, Neil will find him, no, fuck, don’t cry, _clamp, clamp, clamp …_

Distantly, as though he’s talking to Billy from another room, Steve says, “Are you crying?”

“Fuck off,” he says pathetically. “It’s my—it’s my—I get fucking allergies.”

He scrubs his fists over his eyes; he can’t look Steve in the face, _he can’t cry._

“It’s okay to cry,” Steve says; Billy can hear him take a step closer. Can hear him breathing, wet, ragged breaths that are just audible over the whine of cicadas in the trees. “I cry all the time.”

Billy makes a disparaging noise. Sinking to his knees, curling his spine into the shape of a clenched fist; seeking the shade of the cars, retreating in fear of the light, the sound. He doesn’t want to hurt Steve, but he will if Steve forces him to. He’ll have to. It’s the only way he can get through this.

“No, really,” Steve’s voice says. “It’s okay, Billy.”

 _It’s not_ , Billy thinks, eyes still closed. _It won’t ever be okay. It’s wrong. I’m wrong._

“When Mews II—that’s Dustin’s cat—had kittens,” that voice he’s come to know so well continues, “he invited me around to see them. Man, I was never a cat person, but as soon as I got one in my hand, I just—it was so _small_ , oh my God—”

Billy sniffs violently. “Was it soft?”

“Like, really soft.” Steve’s hand touches his, turning it over to stroke his palm. The touch lingers for a second before Steve pulls away. “Softer than that, I dunno. But yeah, I cried. Who cares?”

Billy sniffs again, but the tears don’t stop; he feels hideously transparent, leaky. “I don’t believe you.”

“Well, then we should watch _Return of the Jedi_ sometime. That always makes me cry. I was just really happy the Ewoks made it out,” Steve says. A crunch of gravel; Billy guesses he’s sitting back on his haunches, planting his chin in his palm. It’s how Steve would sit at their spot at the back of the track oval, the tip of a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, the chip in his tooth the only glaring anomaly, “I fucking love those things.”

“I haven’t seen it,” he whispers.

“You WHAT?” A smack of skin on skin; Steve’s hit himself in the face, dragging his palm down his cheeks as he stares at Billy like he hardly knows him. “Dustin’s gonna kill me. The only reason he’s okay with you staying is ‘cause I told him you’re a Star Wars fan—”

He’s still talking when Billy opens his eyes and sees that Steve’s face is closer than he thought; that his mouth is almost level with Billy’s ear. Billy doesn’t wait for Steve to stop talking; he doesn’t even think about it until afterwards, how the dead weight that was his limbs had lifted almost as soon as he leaned over to kiss Steve mid-sentence and it suddenly became easier to _breathe_. It’s not a good kiss; his face is too wet, his hands sweaty, and his body suddenly as ungainly as it was when he was fourteen and he still didn’t know how to be kissed or touched or even loved and so he fumbles, clashing their teeth together painfully. He keeps his eyes closed when it’s over, waiting for Steve to thump him with a fist, a foot, Maxine’s skateboard. It’s what Billy himself would do, if it were the other way around.

“I was wondering when you were going to do that,” Steve says.

Billy’s eyes fly open. He sees Steve’s cracked tooth show itself in a smile, and then his vision blurs as Steve moves closer until all Billy can see and smell is lavender, fragrant and evocative. His throat itches, eyes tracing the angle of Steve’s jaw, down to the ripped collar of his shirt where a curl of chest hair—a lighter brown than the hair on his navel—peeks between the dip of his collarbones. Then Steve’s hand slips under his shirt and Billy almost loses his balance as he reels backwards with a flustered, “What the _fuck_ —”

“Come on.” Steve’s smiling, hand moving in formless circles at the small of Billy’s back. “You kissed me first.”

“I didn’t.”

Steve’s smile fades slightly. “What? Come on, you can’t just take something like that back—”

“You kissed me first,” Billy says. “At Heather’s.”

He’s no longer thinking about the hand under his shirt. It’s Steve’s silence he fucking hates; at home, silence was worse than Neil’s threats, worse than his loudest shout. When his daddy had nothing more to say to him, because it had already been said and Billy _still_ couldn’t get it through his thick skull, that was when he’d know he was well and truly in for it.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he says roughly.

He tries to stand up, but his legs won’t move. They’re still too heavy, as if the heat has fused the soles of his sneakers to the road.

“I’m not,” Steve says, eyes wide. “Billy, I swear, if I fucking knew—I didn’t realize you remembered—”

“You kissed me,” Billy snarls in his face. “ _You_ , Steve Harrington. Golden boy Steve. Guess I should consider myself lucky, huh?”

To his credit, Steve looks genuinely taken aback. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about _Robin Crossley_ , jackass. Tommy says you’re going with her. Says _you_ said her tits taste like peaches and cream—”

“Hey. You shouldn’t speak that way about a lady,” Steve says. He’s grinning again, wide and dopey, and Billy’s mind restarts its bitter, circular chant: _fuck you_. Steve thinks this is funny. He thinks _Billy_ ’s funny.

“That’s how you speak about her!”

“And since when has Tommy been a reputable news source?” Steve shakes his head. “I’m offended, man. You know me better than that.”

“Don’t be dense,” he snaps. “You never know anybody. Not until they show you who they are—”

“So? You think I was just messing around when I kissed you? What about you, Billy? _You’re_ the one who ignored me after. You acted like it never happened! You fucking _asshole_ , if you ever just stopped to think—” Steve stops himself abruptly, his chest heaving. His fingers are digging into Billy’s spine, and Billy can only imagine the marks his nails are leaving in his skin. Wants to imagine telling Steve to _go harder_. “Robin’s _gay_ , numb nuts,” Steve says angrily.

Billy’s mouth works in jerky marionette pulls; throat flexing, tongue flapping, but otherwise void of sound. He stares at Steve, his jaw slack and unbelieving.

“I’m not meant to tell anyone,” Steve continues. “If people knew—if they found out—”

“She told you?” he breathes finally. He can hear his voice cracking, tip-toeing towards that cliff’s edge of full-blown hysteria.

“Yeah, she did. Said she needed a friend to talk to,” says Steve, his expression sour. “And maybe I needed a friend, too, you know? Seeing as you only talked to me when you wanted something.”

Billy tries to swallow. “That’s not how I saw it,” he says; he feels like he’s drowning. It’s getting harder and harder for him to suck in air without choking. “Steve—I didn’t mean—”

“To bite my head off? It’s okay, I’m used to it.”

Steve’s hand hasn’t moved from his back. Steve’s hand is still touching his bare skin, knuckles rolling over each muscle, unpicking the tremendous tension there. He probably gives good massages, Billy thinks senselessly. Probably spoiled Wheeler rotten with them.

“Do you remember when you asked me if I was dropped on my head as a kid?” he says slowly. “At the Byers’?”

Steve groans as he lowers himself fully onto the ground, crossing his legs. His hand continues to move under Billy’s shirt, arcing up his spine to brush at the nape of his neck. “To be honest with you, man, I’ve kinda repressed that whole night.”

“Sometimes, that’s all I think about,” Billy says. “That maybe you were right. I see the world backwards. I think people want somethin’ from me when they don’t. I think they hate me when they don’t. So I try to hate them first. I hated you,” he adds, pulling away so that Steve’s hand falls from his neck, “I fucking _hated_ you for kissing me—”

Steve looks sideways at him. “But you wanted me to.”

Billy watches Steve’s hand drop to his hip, moving to pull at a loose thread hanging from his shirt. Oh, sure, he’s wanted. He’s wanted lots of things throughout his life; sometimes it feels like it’s the want—not the anger, but the _IwantIwantIwant_ spoken to the secret darkness of his bedroom like an unheard prayer—is all that keeps him going. But he also understands that the want is dangerous, because Neil won’t back down. Never has. Never will.

“You’re a good kisser,” Steve says softly. “Better than most guys, anyway.”

It takes Billy longer than usual to process what he knew—but can hardly believe—he heard. “You’ve done this before?”

Steve smiles that dopey, wide smile again. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Hargrove,” he teases.

“That’s fuckin’ funny,” Billy says. He lifts his fist and punches Steve on the shoulder—not too hard—and Steve’s grin widens, delighted, as he retaliates with a jab to Billy’s side with his elbow. Play-fighting in the way that males of any species will do in order to show dominance, but something in the ritual feels off, like a vaguely discordant key; missing its usual bite. Steve’s hand has crept back under his shirt. It could be an accident, but Billy doesn’t think so.

Steve’s fingers squeeze a bone in his spinal cord, and the thrill that zings down to Billy’s toes and back again is exhilarating in its familiarity—is this why we do it? he wonders. Play-fighting, rough-housing, _boys being boys_ —whatever you want to call it—was it all just another way for him to get as close to Steve as he was on New Year’s Eve? Or, God forbid, that night in ‘84? Isn’t there a part of him that knows the script for this, too, having followed it so many times, could’ve followed it even while blindfolded?

“You should kiss me again,” Steve says, “make it real.”

He’s right there when Billy turns his head. Right fucking there, like he was at the far end of the track oval, at Heather’s, on the days when Billy had nowhere else to go. Hand on Billy’s back, hot and solid. It was hot, too, when they first kissed, Steve rocking in his lap, moaning as he pushed the pill into Billy’s mouth with his tongue; like he did then, Billy closes his eyes and relinquishes. Relaxes his shoulders and opens his mouth and pushes himself forwards, as if he were back on his board and feeling the breeze feather over his eyelids. Steve’s lips meet him in the middle. Hot and solid and _real_.

“Jesus, Billy,” Steve murmurs. His hands—both hands, now—dig into the flesh of Billy’s back; Billy can feel him trembling, vibrating right off his bones. He drags his teeth across Steve’s lower lip and Steve gasps, mouth slipping down the column of Billy’s neck to moan in his ear, “ _Jesus_ —”

Billy grips Steve’s collarbone, his chin, tilting it up and kissing him so deeply it smarts. He wants it to smart; wants to feel Steve later, like a perfect bruise forming. Steve’s head falls against the side of the car and his fingers twist in Billy’s hair; for a moment, Billy thinks they’re going to press down. But Steve’s fingers don’t press down. They stay rooted at the crown of Billy’s hair, playing with it, gently massaging his scalp. It feels good. Steve feels _good_. He kisses Billy back hungrily, and Billy lets himself moan aloud, a deep, needy sound that Steve answers eagerly.

When Billy breaks the kiss, his head is throbbing; cheeks baking with heat. He must be sunburned. He never burns, only tans, but his skin feels like it’s raw and peeling under Steve’s gaze. “I don’t know if I can—”

“You can,” Steve says; there’s the note of a plea in his voice. “God, Billy, you _so_ can.”

 _Kill him_ , Billy thinks. _Grind his bones to make your bread._

“I can’t,” he says. “Steve, I can’t go to Mrs. Henderson’s. Not yet. It’s too—all of this, it’s—”

“It’s a lot,” Steve says with a nod, and Billy could kiss him again for that. “Where do you wanna go, then?”

“The track oval. I need a cigarette.” Billy pauses, then says too quickly, “You want one?”

Steve brightens. “Are you offering me one?”

“Yeah. Steve, I—”

He doesn’t even know what he wants to say. That he’s not good at this, that he’s fucked up, that he was probably dropped so many times as a kid that it stirred some bad juju loose; a whole lot of seriously _bad_ juju that, when the floodwaters get too high, will come gushing from between that rusted mind-grate to sweep him away. That he’s tired, so very tired, but he still _wants._

“One more step, Hargrove.” Steve’s hand falls from his back to tangle with Billy’s belt loops. “You got any spare quarters? We should call Claudia on the way, let her know we’re gonna be late.”

Billy didn’t expect to feel different. It’s just a kiss. Things hadn’t been different between them after Steve kissed him the first time and they shouldn’t be different this time, either. But as Steve tugs him upwards by his belt loops, as Steve throws an arm around his shoulder and says something about Mrs. Carlisle calling the Neighborhood Watch on them unless they get a move on, Billy feels something in his chest grow

( _and grow_ )

without stopping, become airborne. They retrieve the shopping cart from the curb, tossing Maxine’s skateboard in with the rest of his things. Billy pushes the handlebars and Steve climbs in at the front, tucking his hands childishly over the sides. Billy doesn’t look back at his dad’s house. He’s used to looking back over his shoulder, waiting for the hand that comes out of nowhere to clamp down on his neck. The fear’s still there, gnawing at him with rat-sharp teeth, but it’s different. More diluted. Like the remnants of a bad nightmare; he can’t remember why it was so bad, only that it was. A nightmare that’s receding, getting less and less opaque with each step, and he’s moving faster away from it now, the breathless soaring in his stomach has reached his ears, taken him in its stride and Steve’s there, Steve’s with him.

**Author's Note:**

> [contact](https://hexlikesramennoodles.tumblr.com/)


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